Plant responses to increasing CO 2 reduce estimates of climate impacts on drought severity
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Significance: We show that the water savings that plants experience under high CO 2 conditions compensate for much of the effect of warmer temperatures, keeping the amount of water on land, on average, higher than we would predict with common drought metrics, and with a different spatial pattern. The implications of plants needing less water under high CO 2 reaches beyond drought prediction to the assessment of climate change impacts on agriculture, water resources, wildfire risk, and vegetation dynamics.
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Even if higher CO2 lessens drought stress via plant responses, warming probably will dry fuels faster and raise risk where people commonly ignite fires.
“Although plant physiological responses to rising CO2 may reduce some drought stress (46), climate change will likely lead to faster desiccation of fuels and increased risk in areas where human ignitions are prevalent.”
From Human-started wildfires expand the fire niche across the United States (2017) · cites this paper as [46]
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- Authors
- Swann, A. L. S., Hoffman, F. M., Koven, C. D., & Randerson, J. T.
- Affiliations
- University of Washington (US)
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (US)
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (US)
- University of California, Irvine (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2016-08-29
- Volume
- 113
- Issue
- 36
- Pages
- 10019-10024
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC5018756
- OpenAlex
- W2515280555
- Cited by
- 585
- References
- 57
- Citations by year
- 2026: 34 · 2025: 55 · 2024: 62 · 2023: 58 · 2022: 77 · 2021: 76 · 2020: 63 · 2019: 47 · 2018: 69 · 2017: 32 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 38.46
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) (submittedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (AGS-1321745, EF-1340649)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Hydrology and Drought Analysis
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
- Keywords
- atmospheric CO2 increase, drought severity, stomatal conductance, plant transpiration, precipitation minus evapotranspiration, Palmer Drought Severity Index, Earth system model output, soil moisture, drought indices, precipitation decrease
- MeSH terms
- Asia, Atmosphere, Carbon Dioxide, Europe, Models, Biological, Photosynthesis, Soil, South America, Water, Ecosystem, Plant Leaves, Plant Transpiration, Droughts, Climate Change
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